Matthew Helmke is an active member of the Ubuntu community. He served from 2006 to 2011 on the Ubuntu Forum Council, providing leadership and oversight of the Ubuntu Forums (www.ubuntuforums.org), and spent two years on the Ubuntu regional membership approval board for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. He has written about Ubuntu for several magazines and websites, is a lead author of The Official Ubuntu Book, and coauthored The VMware Cookbook. He works as a senior technical writer for Pearson North America's Assessment and Information division, documenting assessment software. Matthew first used Unix in 1987 while studying LISP on a Vax at the university. He has run a business using only free and open source software, has consulted, and has a master's degree in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona. You can find out more about Matthew at matthewhelmke.com or drop him a line with errata or suggestions at matthew@matthewhelmke.com. Andrew Hudson is a freelance journalist who specializes in writing about Linux. He has significant experience in Red Hat and Debian-based Linux distributions and deployments and can often be found sitting at his keyboard tweaking various settings and config files just for the hell of it. He lives in Wiltshire, which is a county of England, along with his wife, Bernice, and their son, John. Andrew does not like Emacs. He can be reached at andy.hudson@gmail.com. Paul Hudson is a recognized expert in open-source technologies. He is also a professional developer and full-time journalist for Future Publishing. His articles have appeared in MacFormat, PC Answers, PC Format, PC Plus, and Linux Format. Paul is passionate about free software in all its forms and uses a mix of Linux and BSD to power his desktops and servers. Paul likes Emacs. Paul can be contacted through http://hudzilla.org.
Introduction 1
Licensing 2
Who This Book Is For 3
Those Wanting to Become Intermediate or Advanced Users 3
Sysadmins, Programmers, and DevOps 4
What This Book Contains 5
Conventions Used in This Book 6
Part I Getting Started
1 Installing Ubuntu and Post-Installation Configuration 9
Before You Begin the Installation 9
Researching Your Hardware Specifications 10
Installation Options 10
32-Bit vs 64-Bit Ubuntu 12
Planning Partition Strategies 12
The Boot Loader 13
Installing from DVD or USB Drive 14
Step-by-Step Installation 14
Installing 15
First Update 19
Shutting Down 19
Finding Programs and Files 20
Software Updater 21
The sudo Command 24
Configuring Software Repositories 25
System Settings 27
Detecting and Configuring a Printer 28
Configuring Power Management in Ubuntu 29
Setting the Time and Date 29
Configuring Wireless Networks 31
Troubleshooting Post-Installation Configuration Problems 33
References 34
2 Background Information and Resources 35
What Is Linux? 35
Why Use Linux? 36
What Is Ubuntu? 38
Ubuntu for Business 39
Ubuntu in Your Home 40
Getting the Most from Ubuntu and Linux Documentation 40
Ubuntu Developers and Documentation 42
Websites and Search Engines 42
Web Search Tips 42
Google Is Your Friend 43
Ubuntu Package Listings 43
Commercial Support 44
Documentation 44
Linux Guides 44
Ubuntu 45
Mailing Lists 46
Ubuntu Project Mailing Lists 46
Internet Relay Chat 47
Part II Desktop Ubuntu
3 Working with Unity 49
Foundations and the X Server 49
Basic X Concepts 50
Using X 51
Elements of the xorg.conf File 52
Starting X 57
Using a Display Manager 58
Changing Window Managers 58
Using Unity, a Primer 59
The Desktop 59
Customizing and Configuring Unity 65
Power Shortcuts 66
References 67
4 On the Internet 69
Getting Started with Firefox 70
Checking Out Google Chrome and Chromium 71
Choosing an Email Client 73
Mozilla Thunderbird 73
Evolution 74
Other Mail Clients 75
RSS Readers 76
Firefox 76
Liferea 76
Instant Messaging and Video Conferencing
with Empathy 77
Internet Relay Chat 78
Usenet Newsgroups 80
Ubuntu One Cloud Storage 82
References 82
5 Productivity Applications 83
Introducing LibreOffice 85
Other Office Suites for Ubuntu 87
Working with GNOME Office 87
Working with KOffice 88
Other Useful Productivity Software 89